There is little difference in IQ for any DSLR at ISO 100. You are buying features and hype.

For landscapes, more MP will give you more detail, but as MP count goes up, so does the difficulty in actually getting that extra bit of resolution. There are some who do very well with high MP cameras, but the average photographer is not obsessed with a incremental increase in resolution, the more important elements such as composition and subject, lighting, DR, etc put and IQ improvements far down the list. In fact, I don't even know how to measure something hypothetical like IQ that only exists in the mind of a photographer and is different for each of them. We can measure several parameters, and they trade off against each other, but IQ? That sounds like something DXO would assign a number to

There is a pretty huge difference at ISO100. That is actually where cameras differ the most since they are all pretty solid at high ISO now. But at low ISO some have one to THREE AND A HALF stops better dynamic range than others. For many scenes that doesn't matter at all, but for many potential scenes it could.

70D RAW file appears to show the same old DR as Canon has been stuck with since 2007 . I hope it is not their new process sensor!

\So ... You define IQ as dynamic range?? That's the problem with the Term IQ, it is defined by different people as different things.

DR capability is great if you need it due to poor lighting conditions, but for a properly lit subject, it makes little difference.

why do not Canon gives its sensor production to companies that are specialized ,fabless' strategy for semiconductor manufacturers, used by Aptina, Foveon, Omnivision and even some of Sony's production is much more flexible

I guess the one downside is then they'd be stuck with worse video (not that they seemed to actually want to take advantage of the huge advantage they had over the others in DSLR video and it didn't become apparent until Magic Lantern unlocked the full performance potential) and liveview and whatever MP counts the others chose. Although you think they might be able to for a league with one of them if need be, maybe even borrow and share some tech with say Aptina or something. Foveon still has certain issues, better in some ways but yes worse in others.

There is little difference in IQ for any DSLR at ISO 100. You are buying features and hype.

For landscapes, more MP will give you more detail, but as MP count goes up, so does the difficulty in actually getting that extra bit of resolution. There are some who do very well with high MP cameras, but the average photographer is not obsessed with a incremental increase in resolution, the more important elements such as composition and subject, lighting, DR, etc put and IQ improvements far down the list. In fact, I don't even know how to measure something hypothetical like IQ that only exists in the mind of a photographer and is different for each of them. We can measure several parameters, and they trade off against each other, but IQ? That sounds like something DXO would assign a number to

There is a pretty huge difference at ISO100. That is actually where cameras differ the most since they are all pretty solid at high ISO now. But at low ISO some have one to THREE AND A HALF stops better dynamic range than others. For many scenes that doesn't matter at all, but for many potential scenes it could.

70D RAW file appears to show the same old DR as Canon has been stuck with since 2007 . I hope it is not their new process sensor!

\So ... You define IQ as dynamic range?? That's the problem with the Term IQ, it is defined by different people as different things.

DR capability is great if you need it due to poor lighting conditions, but for a properly lit subject, it makes little difference.

I didn't say I defined it as DR. I even said that you can find many scenes where it doesn't even matter to get more DR and getting more DR would have zero bearing on image quality.

But you can also an incredible number where it would be nice to have more.It's not right to call it poor lighting conditions, they can be perfectly fine if the camera can handle it. What may be poor lighting to avoid using a 5D2 may be wonderful lighting conditions for a D800.

There is little difference in IQ for any DSLR at ISO 100. You are buying features and hype.

For landscapes, more MP will give you more detail, but as MP count goes up, so does the difficulty in actually getting that extra bit of resolution. There are some who do very well with high MP cameras, but the average photographer is not obsessed with a incremental increase in resolution, the more important elements such as composition and subject, lighting, DR, etc put and IQ improvements far down the list. In fact, I don't even know how to measure something hypothetical like IQ that only exists in the mind of a photographer and is different for each of them. We can measure several parameters, and they trade off against each other, but IQ? That sounds like something DXO would assign a number to

There is a pretty huge difference at ISO100. That is actually where cameras differ the most since they are all pretty solid at high ISO now. But at low ISO some have one to THREE AND A HALF stops better dynamic range than others. For many scenes that doesn't matter at all, but for many potential scenes it could.

70D RAW file appears to show the same old DR as Canon has been stuck with since 2007 . I hope it is not their new process sensor!

My guess is Canon's noise problems are not really with their sensor, but with the downstream high frequency electronics. In other words, DIGIC. It seems most other manufacturers have moved to on-die processing of some kind...Sony with CP-ADC, and others with something similar...on-die ADC. Canon supposedly had similar technology with the 120mp APS-H (the press releases explicitly called out on-die "parallel image processing", which I can only figure is ADC)...why they haven't put the technology into practice is beyond me.

because they sell cameras and have only invested in 2 fab lines which one is old and can not produce column vise ADC at the sensor = 500nm feature size, which means that it cannot be used for small pixels and =higher resolution with the accuracy needed120mp is from fab line 2 = the compact camera line where they( Canon) can produce smaller circuits but it takes resources from the compakt lineSo it is costs vs better and newer solutions in APS and 24x36People buy anyway Canon because the brand name is so strong and they think Canon makes the best sensors And Canon says , Who needs more than 21Mp it is the optimal amount of MpRight?

You overlook the fact that the sensors actually DO work and work quite well. People aren’t buying this stuff because somehow Canon has stirred some sort of marketing “fairy dust” into their morning coffee – they are buying it because it works, the cameras produce excellent images and they see people getting excellent results using the equipment. This is exactly why when the 5DIII came out (and the price dropped to a more reasonable level), I upgraded from my 5DII. I did this because I knew that the gear would do the job I needed it to do and that it would do it well, and it has.

21 MP probably is a good sweet spot when you trade off how much resolution is actually needed / used by typical photographers vs. file size, firing rate etc. 36 MP is good if you need it, but I think that most photographers do not necessarily need it (particularly when it comes at a cost in terms of storage, processing time and firing rate). And, before you start, I know all the rebuttals, disk storage is cheap etc. but huge files are with you always whether you need them or not, I am glad I don’t have to put up with them.

21 MP probably is a good sweet spot??remember this David

years ago some people said that 8 Mp was a sweet spot

anything Canon does look as a sweet spot, especially as long they not can compete with new sensorsMarket bullsh....

At that time it probably was. I had a 20D that was about that resolution and had a firing rate around 4 FPS. It seems that right now (for Canon anyway) they seem to be able to get 22MP to work around 6 FPS using 1 CPU etc. I am not sure what they are doing in the latest stuff because they seem to be able to process 40MP at near that rate so they must have found some speed somewhere.

They all look pretty good in that environment. What most of these guys are arguing about is what is lurking in the deep shadows when you try to lift these up in post. It isn't really DR either (not in the DxO sense anyway), it is more in terms of structured noise which Canon products have had more of than some of the others. All these cameras perform pretty much identically above ISO 400 which is what a lot of people are concerned with.

Canon gear is not as forgiving when you want to bring up shadow areas in post or when you want to deliberately under expose a photo (defined in this case as manually dialing in an exposure below what the meter recommends) and then compensate in post.

why do not Canon gives its sensor production to companies that are specialized ,fabless' strategy for semiconductor manufacturers, used by Aptina, Foveon, Omnivision and even some of Sony's production is much more flexible

I guess the one downside is then they'd be stuck with worse video (not that they seemed to actually want to take advantage of the huge advantage they had over the others in DSLR video and it didn't become apparent until Magic Lantern unlocked the full performance potential) and liveview and whatever MP counts the others chose. Although you think they might be able to for a league with one of them if need be, maybe even borrow and share some tech with say Aptina or something. Foveon still has certain issues, better in some ways but yes worse in others.

well, thats not a answer regarding semiconductor manufacturers, there are facilities out there who can produce smaller cells today to Canon with Canons pixel layout, Canon are stucked by 2 own lines, one old and one more modern occupied to produce compact sensors

and please David Hull, "He is unfathomably narrow sighted" etc etc , you can interpret my texts and call me the what you want, I think people can distinguish between something that is good or better. AS with lenses as one example.The big problem for you and some others is that Canon is not in the top regarding sensors.Your discussing can be interpreted as, why buy the best lenses,when there are others inferior imagewise but" good enough". It seems OK to discuss lenses, AF, pictures/sec and everything else but not the heart of a digital camera-the sensor and the read out

I guess that last part was addressed to me but I am not sure what your point is. Did I actually say "He is unfathomably narrow sighted" somewhere? I don’t think so; I think it was one of the other guys that actually wrote that, I just quoted it.

I really don't have a problem with Canon being behind in sensor technology -- that seems to be your issue. Someone is always ahead and someone is always behind. My question is always, will it do what I want it to do and are the limitations that it has relatively easy to work around. If yes, then no problem, if no then I need to find a solution outside of Canon. So far, Canon has not done anything bad enough and Nikon has not done anything good enough to make me spend the money to switch. From my perspective the Nikon story is one of too little, too late. They needed to be the best in 2004 back when I took the dive on the 20D but they weren’t. This DR thing which is really only an issue for a certain narrow selection of shooting scenarios at low ISO is easy to work around, I would rather shoot fast, downloads fast, than have 36 MP.

If I were starting now, knowing what I knew when I started, I might pick Nikon however, if I were starting now, knowing what I know now, I might still pick Canon I don’t think the differences are that great.

But on the other hand, *any* recent dslr is a good camera, starting with my very good 60d and going down to any Rebel 550d+ if you don't miss the top lcd and back dial. So while customers which aren't nailed to a system by their existing equipment have a great choice, the question if upgrading is "worth it" becomes more dependent on the specific circumstances.

Due John Sheehy the noise floor is the same as in other Canon cameras but more pleasing, my own remarks = like 6D compared to 5dmk3This means a little better practical DR

When I asked him to elaborate on that here is what I got:

David Hull wrote: This sounds promising. Where did you get this info can you put up a link or something or did you measure it yourself?

JS Commented: Get the ISO 100 RAWs for the black mug and napkins from Imaging-Resource for the 7D and the 70D; push 4 or 5 stops and compare. The chromatic noise of the 70D is finer with colors evenly distributed, and there is no noticeable banding. You can see the texture in the black napkins.

I had looked at the IR data and thought it looked clean but did not look at the RAWs for lack of a converter. The LR RC converter is available for anyone that wants to have a look. I may do that or may wait to see a "rear of the lens cap" shot.

This sounds promising though, the DxO measured random noise was never that much of an issue (although the Nikon fanboys will surely try to make it one). To me it was always the banding that posed the biggest problem because it was a stop or two worse than the random noise (or at least it looked to be that loud anyway).

The noise has never bothered me in these things it has always been the banding.

EXACTLYI'd have kept my 5d2 and 7d if it were not for the plaid/stripes. FWIW, the 5d2 felt pretty crude in some ways anyway so I certainly don't miss it as much as the 7d.

I'm also interested in seeing whether the outer area of the 70d sensor that is NOT dual-sensel equipped will provide a slightly different noise pattern than the main area.I can sometimes make out the crop area of my d800's sensor IF I do things just right and push it really hard from a dark frame shot; and that's not as much of a structural difference as dual vs single sensels.

I'll do a lens cap shot as soon as I can get my hands on a 70d. I'd like to see how much better it may be than my 60d in terms of FPN.

The noise has never bothered me in these things it has always been the banding.

EXACTLYI'd have kept my 5d2 and 7d if it were not for the plaid/stripes. FWIW, the 5d2 felt pretty crude in some ways anyway so I certainly don't miss it as much as the 7d.

I'm also interested in seeing whether the outer area of the 70d sensor that is NOT dual-sensel equipped will provide a slightly different noise pattern than the main area.I can sometimes make out the crop area of my d800's sensor IF I do things just right and push it really hard from a dark frame shot; and that's not as much of a structural difference as dual vs single sensels.

I'll do a lens cap shot as soon as I can get my hands on a 70d. I'd like to see how much better it may be than my 60d in terms of FPN.

Hmm, interesting point about the outer pixel area. I'd be interested in seeing if there is any difference as well.

The noise has never bothered me in these things it has always been the banding.

EXACTLYI'd have kept my 5d2 and 7d if it were not for the plaid/stripes. FWIW, the 5d2 felt pretty crude in some ways anyway so I certainly don't miss it as much as the 7d.

I'm also interested in seeing whether the outer area of the 70d sensor that is NOT dual-sensel equipped will provide a slightly different noise pattern than the main area.I can sometimes make out the crop area of my d800's sensor IF I do things just right and push it really hard from a dark frame shot; and that's not as much of a structural difference as dual vs single sensels.

I'll do a lens cap shot as soon as I can get my hands on a 70d. I'd like to see how much better it may be than my 60d in terms of FPN.

A lens cap shot would be good to see. I think that is the best way to see what is really lurking down there.

They must be doing something different in this sensor because all of the sudden they are able to read out 40MP at 7 FPS in this thing while the best they seemed to be able to do with the 5DIII was 22 MP at 6 FPS which is almost 2x the processing speed still using the so-called DiGiC 5+. Maybe in the process of doing that whey also cleaned up the FPN somewhat.

There has always been confusion on the forums and the threads with regard to the DxO measurements and some of the so-called “comparison tests” that people love to show. The DxO result is really showing random noise effects but the thing that shows up so strongly in the ad-hoc demos is really the pattern noise.

I find that the 5DIII is a significant improvement over the 5DII and supposedly the 6D is even better so perhaps they have finally figured out how to read out the sensor nicely.

The noise has never bothered me in these things it has always been the banding.

EXACTLYI'd have kept my 5d2 and 7d if it were not for the plaid/stripes. FWIW, the 5d2 felt pretty crude in some ways anyway so I certainly don't miss it as much as the 7d.

I'm also interested in seeing whether the outer area of the 70d sensor that is NOT dual-sensel equipped will provide a slightly different noise pattern than the main area.I can sometimes make out the crop area of my d800's sensor IF I do things just right and push it really hard from a dark frame shot; and that's not as much of a structural difference as dual vs single sensels.

I'll do a lens cap shot as soon as I can get my hands on a 70d. I'd like to see how much better it may be than my 60d in terms of FPN.

A lens cap shot would be good to see. I think that is the best way to see what is really lurking down there.

They must be doing something different in this sensor because all of the sudden they are able to read out 40MP at 7 FPS in this thing while the best they seemed to be able to do with the 5DIII was 22 MP at 6 FPS which is almost 2x the processing speed still using the so-called DiGiC 5+. Maybe in the process of doing that whey also cleaned up the FPN somewhat.

There has always been confusion on the forums and the threads with regard to the DxO measurements and some of the so-called “comparison tests” that people love to show. The DxO result is really showing random noise effects but the thing that shows up so strongly in the ad-hoc demos is really the pattern noise.

I find that the 5DIII is a significant improvement over the 5DII and supposedly the 6D is even better so perhaps they have finally figured out how to read out the sensor nicely.

It will make the threads a lot more fun for a while anyway ;-)

Well the 5D3 solved the pattern banding at low ISO in ONE direction but it still has oooodles of it the other direction so IMO it does no better in that regard than the 5D2, hatched or striped it still sticks out to the eye.

Now the 6D did do better more like back to the old 1D3/40D days.

It seems that the 70D MAY, still no full black frame so it's hard to be sure, also the test pre-production cameras have often had much better banding than release cameras, bit it seems it may have fixed the banding and clumping problems so that the low ISO shadow noise now has the nice character of Exmor more or less.

However, at least going by the masked area, the regular fine grained shadow noise is actually maybe a trace worse than the 7D if anything.

So on engineering DR it seems they have still made zero progress, most likely. But at least they may have finally fully solved the low ISO banding issues so you will at least be able, most likely, to get the most out of the shadow SNR that they do provide you with (although it seem still maybe 2+ stops behind Exmor for that). It may be all but entirely free of pattern banding and chroma and luma blobbing. But still quite noisy for the fine pattern noise. Anyway it might be a lot, lot nicer to deal with than most canon cameras other than the 1Ds3 and 6D and 1Dx and a decent deal nicer to deal with than those and like Exmor in that regard. But again the StdDev of the random black frame noise appeared to be very old school again.

The 5D3 did seem to improve high ISO banding of all types over the 5D2.

The noise has never bothered me in these things it has always been the banding.

EXACTLYI'd have kept my 5d2 and 7d if it were not for the plaid/stripes. FWIW, the 5d2 felt pretty crude in some ways anyway so I certainly don't miss it as much as the 7d.

I'm also interested in seeing whether the outer area of the 70d sensor that is NOT dual-sensel equipped will provide a slightly different noise pattern than the main area.I can sometimes make out the crop area of my d800's sensor IF I do things just right and push it really hard from a dark frame shot; and that's not as much of a structural difference as dual vs single sensels.

I'll do a lens cap shot as soon as I can get my hands on a 70d. I'd like to see how much better it may be than my 60d in terms of FPN.

A lens cap shot would be good to see. I think that is the best way to see what is really lurking down there.

They must be doing something different in this sensor because all of the sudden they are able to read out 40MP at 7 FPS in this thing while the best they seemed to be able to do with the 5DIII was 22 MP at 6 FPS which is almost 2x the processing speed still using the so-called DiGiC 5+. Maybe in the process of doing that whey also cleaned up the FPN somewhat.

There has always been confusion on the forums and the threads with regard to the DxO measurements and some of the so-called “comparison tests” that people love to show. The DxO result is really showing random noise effects but the thing that shows up so strongly in the ad-hoc demos is really the pattern noise.

I find that the 5DIII is a significant improvement over the 5DII and supposedly the 6D is even better so perhaps they have finally figured out how to read out the sensor nicely.

It will make the threads a lot more fun for a while anyway ;-)

Well the 5D3 solved the pattern banding at low ISO in ONE direction but it still has oooodles of it the other direction so IMO it does no better in that regard than the 5D2, hatched or striped it still sticks out to the eye.

Now the 6D did do better more like back to the old 1D3/40D days.

It seems that the 70D MAY, still no full black frame so it's hard to be sure, also the test pre-production cameras have often had much better banding than release cameras, bit it seems it may have fixed the banding and clumping problems so that the low ISO shadow noise now has the nice character of Exmor more or less.

However, at least going by the masked area, the regular fine grained shadow noise is actually maybe a trace worse than the 7D if anything.

So on engineering DR it seems they have still made zero progress, most likely. But at least they may have finally fully solved the low ISO banding issues so you will at least be able, most likely, to get the most out of the shadow SNR that they do provide you with (although it seem still maybe 2+ stops behind Exmor for that). It may be all but entirely free of pattern banding and chroma and luma blobbing. But still quite noisy for the fine pattern noise. Anyway it might be a lot, lot nicer to deal with than most canon cameras other than the 1Ds3 and 6D and 1Dx and a decent deal nicer to deal with than those and like Exmor in that regard. But again the StdDev of the random black frame noise appeared to be very old school again.

The 5D3 did seem to improve high ISO banding of all types over the 5D2.

The striped pattern noise is pretty easy to deal with using available noise reduction tools which represents an improvement as far as I am concerned.